The table we published in last week’s Rochester Times, detailing real estate activity in Strafford County for the eight-year period ending in December 2012 clearly shows the downward track of the property market roller-coaster, as measured by the number of deeds and mortgages recorded annually.

That same table also indicates that we have reached the bottom of dip and are beginning to head back up again — a journey to recovery, if the last major real estate debacle is a guide, that may take five years or so. That word “recovery,” though, should be used with caution, for if house prices climb back up to the dizzying heights of the past, and once again outpace the increase in an average family’s annual income, while financiers find new ways to lure the gullible to get in too deep, the unhappy consequences can be guessed.

The last big property bust, as real estate veteran Bill Cormier reminds us, occurred around 1988 and it was at least 1993 before home prices recovered to what they were — about a five year recovery period. Things were both better and worse, back then in the Seacoast area. What saved a lot of homeowners from foreclosure during that period was the large down payment that new home buyers were required to make ... around 20 percent of the value in many cases, so that even when property prices sagged, the value of the home was often still above the outstanding mortgage.

That was the good news. The bad news, for those who can’t recall, is that several regional banks failed, Pease Air Force Base, which pumped money into the local economy, closed, and the unemployed rate soared as shoe factories moved offshore.

Now the situation is a little different. The greater Rochester economy is more diverse and arguably less vulnerable than it was 20 years ago, with the manufacturing sector no longer as dominant. Also, local and state banks are in good shape, for it was the leading national banks and Wall Street that bundled shoddy mortgages into toxic assets that lead to the financial crisis which erupted in 2008.

Back at our real estate activity table, the numbers show that 2012 was a marked improvement over 2011, except for the foreclosures column.

Last year, in Rochester, there were 129 foreclosures, compared to 118 the year before, and there have now been almost 700, from 2007 onwards. Apart from the personal misery for the families involved, and the strain then experienced by social service providers, these bank-owned properties are put on the market and sold at prices that hold back the rebound, and thus keep many other homeowners close to being “under water.”

As long as repossessed homes, too, are being unloaded onto the property market in large numbers, it slows down a recovery in the construction sector of the economy, and this sector — although, statewide, it only employs between, 20,000 and 30,000 workers, depending on the time of year — has a ripple effect.

Underpinning it all, though, is the ability of people — especially young people — to buy a home, and thus a healthy job market is of paramount importance.

Although the New Hampshire economy, as a whole, crept in the wrong direction in 2012, and counter to the national trend of slow improvement, we remain optimistic that in the greater Rochester area, at least, 2013 will be a watershed year — one of advancement.